1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a storage medium storing a game program, a game apparatus, a communication game system and a game control method. More specifically, the present invention relates to a storage medium storing a game program for playing a communication game among a plurality of apparatuses including a parent device and at least one child device, a game apparatus, a communication game system and a game control method.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, in playing a communication game among a plurality of game apparatuses, a method for providing uniformity of communications among the game apparatuses is employed by which individual pieces of information treated by the players of the game apparatuses are collected into one game apparatus (parent device) and then are unified and sent to all the other game apparatuses (child devices). In communication between the parent device and a child device, a time lag often takes places between the instance when information on operation performed by the child device is transmitted to the parent device and the instant when the conclusion is received from the parent device. For instance, when the player of a child device performs some act on one item existing in the game, the child device connects with the parent device for a conclusion on the possibility of the act, but some delay of time occurs before the child device receives the conclusion from the parent device.
The prior art described in document 1 (Japanese Patent Application Laying-open No. 2003-6127) implements a change in the state of the game screen resulting from an operation input from the user's terminal, without waiting for a notification from the processing server. After that, if there arises any difference from the game screen on the processing server due to a time lag in communications, the state of the game screen on the user's terminal is continuously changed over a predetermined period of time so as to be the same as the state of the game screen on the processing server. In this manner, such an effort is made to give no unnatural impression to the player.
The related art of document 1 is effective in performing such an operation as moving a character in the game, but cannot be efficiently applied to events requiring an exclusive process such as a character's picking up a unique item. Thus, for an exclusive event, it is necessary to seek for permission to execute the event from the processing server and temporarily stop the operation of a character until receiving a notification from the processing server. Accordingly, even if the player has carried out an operational designation of a character, a delay in receiving notification from the processing server causes a situation in which the character does not go into action immediately, which makes the player feel discomfort. This problem becomes more prominent as the state of communication gets deteriorated. In the case of using the art in document 1 for such an exclusive event as mentioned above, even if an operation has been performed to make the character pick up an item without waiting for a notification from the processing server, for example, when a notification of rejection is transmitted from the processing server, it is necessary to carry out an operation of producing a situation in which the character cannot pick up the item. That is, when such a contradiction arises, it is impossible to provide consistency between the character's action and the player's operation, which may make the player feel distrust of the game.